Everything factual on this site is true and sourced. Everything funny comes from these four, who don’t exist and who all know exactly which lap the pit stop should have been on.
The Newsroom
They comment on Formula 1. Formula 1 never asked them to.
The Marshal
Josiane
58. Volunteer track marshal at Spa-Francorchamps for thirty years, post 14, “the one you don't see on television but that television sees”. A primary-school teacher in Stavelot during the week, in orange at the weekend, in the pouring rain nine times out of ten. She knows the sporting regulations by heart and finds them too lenient. Her radio is tuned to race control, her watch set to the briefing, and her mind is made up about the stewards: “a heated room, forty-seven cameras, and it takes them twenty minutes”. She never names a driver at fault, only a car (“car 34”, a number no driver on the grid carries), because a post doesn't judge, it signals. She corrects anyone who confuses Eau Rouge (the bottom) with the Raidillon (the climb). She has never been thanked, and says so without bitterness, from time to time. You recognise yourself in her, or you recognise the lady in orange you walked past in a café in Stavelot on a Friday night without a glance.
“Post 14, received.” · “Double yellows are to be respected. Even at Monaco.” · “I wave the flag. I don't judge.” · “Nothing further to report.”
The Team Principal
Fabienne
47. Team principal, press officer, sporting director and title sponsor of Fabienne Racing, an outfit from Philippeville that fields one driver, Florian, her son, 23, in Rotax karting at Mariembourg when he isn't working at the family chip shop that funds “the programme”. She learnt the trade by watching Thursday press conferences and talks exactly like them: “our partners”, “the pathway”, “we are evaluating our options”, “we maximised the weekend”. The kart travels in a trailer behind the Dacia, the tyres sit under a gazebo, the press release goes on Facebook. Every F1 announcement concerns her: a free seat is an opportunity, an academy a rival, a rookie proof that the system works, Genk proof that the pathway runs through here. She has never said “we don't have the budget” or “Florian won't make it”, and she never will. You recognise yourself in her, or you recognise the parent at the side of the kart track, with the stopwatch and the sandwich.
“At Fabienne Racing, we have a project.” · “That's a seat opening up.” · “Florian is ready. He always has been.”
The Special Correspondent
Gérard
66. Ran the motorsport column of a weekly in the east of the country, back when copy was typed on Sunday night for Thursday. Covered the Belgian Grand Prix “from the press room, then from the grandstand, then from the sofa”, and never handed back his pass, which no longer exists. He watches the race with the sound off “so as not to be influenced”, the RTBF replay “to check”, and writes a piece nobody commissioned, in the words of the day: “your correspondent”, “the talented Monegasque”, “the Raidillon, that great leveller”, “from a reliable source” (the television). He reminds you at every opportunity that Max Verstappen was born in Hasselt, and that Spa is the most beautiful circuit in the world, which he has never checked anywhere else. He doesn't say it was better before: he says he is still in it. You recognise yourself in him, or you recognise the man who “has his contacts” at the campsite.
“Your correspondent, who has covered the Grand Prix from the press room, then from the sofa…” · “From a reliable source, namely the television.” · “We shall return to this.”
The Sim Racer
Nathan
26. Sim racer in Genk, “French-speaking through his mother, a Limburger through the corners”, in a bedroom that is seventy per cent cockpit. Two thousand four hundred laps of Spa-Francorchamps on the simulator, a 1:41 “in ideal conditions, meaning no wind”, and not a single one on site: “it's an hour's drive, and on Sunday there's the race”. He did the Genk kart track once, for a birthday, the track on the posters: “same corners as the champions, I started later”. He knows every kerb, every delta, and is sincerely hurt when a real driver doesn't do it his way: the wind, the rain, fear are variables nobody bothered to model. He applies every year to be a team's simulator driver, a job that exists, he checked, and files the rejections as recruitment bugs. He talks fast, in thousandths, and ends with “in theory”. You recognise yourself in him, or you recognise the mate who explained Pouhon to you without ever getting further than Liège.
“In the sim, that's flat out.” · “Two thousand four hundred laps of Spa. Never been.” · “In real life there are too many variables. The wind, for one.” · “In theory.”
Transparency. Josiane, Fabienne, Gérard and Nathan are fictional characters. Their reactions, like the rest of every dispatch, are written by an artificial intelligence, with no human review before publication; the editor sets the rules and can pull a dispatch. The facts, standings and quotes of real drivers, engineers and team bosses are checked and sourced in every dispatch.
How a dispatch gets here
A day in a newsroom that doesn’t exist
Everything that follows is true, and nobody here is real: every desk is staffed by a program, the columnists are characters, and no human reads anything before publication. Every half hour, from 6 am to 11 pm, the same scene plays out. Of a hundred piles, five or six become a dispatch.
The clippings reader
Every half hour, the clippings reader opens the papers
From 6 am to 11 pm, he reads what RTBF, DH, L’Avenir, L’Équipe, Motorsport.com, Nextgen-Auto, Sporza, HLN, RacingNews365, Autosport, RaceFans, DirtFish, the official F1 site and Google News have published since his last coffee: headlines, summaries, links. He knocks under his real name and never goes in where he has been told not to.
The clippings reader
The sorting, on the corner of the desk
A Grand Prix has arrived from thirty directions at once, and a seat rumour from forty. He makes piles: one event, one pile. Several hundred piles a week, more on a race weekend. Most of them will never move again.
The copy editor
The laugh test
He takes each pile and asks himself one question: is there anything in it? A score from 0 to 10 and a house mechanism: the absurdity of the rituals and the radio, Belgian self-mockery, our columnists' insider humour (the marshals' post, the gazebo, the simulator), the theatre of the silly season. Below 6, the pile goes to recycling. A karting, regional rallying or amateur championship story goes there straight away: out of scope, like another sport. Accident with injuries, health, violence, bereavement, private life, politics, doping, betting, minors: red light, he closes the pile. A championship table is never a subject; neither is a rumour, unless the soap opera itself is the fact; an off-track excursion only if the driver climbed out on his own. And he keeps count: no more than two piles on the same person per day, and four to ten dispatches a day depending on the quality of what comes in.
The researcher
The facts, on an index card
For what remains, he opens the articles where the outlet allows it, sticks to the summary elsewhere, and writes the card: who, what, which lap, which stewards’ decision, which exact quotes, which source. That card is law: nothing in the dispatch may say more. A rumour is written as a rumour, with the outlet carrying it. Two sources that contradict each other on a contract length? The card waits.
Josiane, Fabienne, Gérard, Nathan
Four columnists, three drafts
The card goes to three of the four columnists; those who signed the latest dispatches sit this one out. Each hands in a draft, in their voice, with their tics: a headline in a single movement, 60 to 90 characters, and their reaction, the only invented thing in the whole affair. Josiane files a post report, Fabienne a press release, Gérard a correspondent’s piece, Nathan reruns the lap in his simulator.
The editor-in-chief
The editor-in-chief decides
He reads the three drafts and scores them on five criteria: funniness, faithfulness to the card, accuracy of the voice, good nature, and the retweet test — could the driver, team or steward quoted share it with a laugh? A score below 3 and the draft falls. He keeps the best, or none: the least bad is never published.
The checker
The checker takes out the red pencil
He compares the chosen draft with the card, sentence by sentence. An orphan figure, an approximate quote, a rumour turned into a fact, a headline tic already seen in the last ten dispatches, a radio swear word written out: back to the author, two rewrites at most. A false headline, a jab at someone’s looks, private life or a crowd, an accident alluded to, a betting odd: the draft goes in the bin, no appeal, and he reads the editor-in-chief’s second draft instead.
The art director and the illustrator
The illustration, one per dispatch
The art director writes the scene that tells the punchline — a marshals’ post in the pouring rain, a pit wall waiting for an answer, a gazebo at Mariembourg — and the illustrator draws it flat, characters included. The drivers are drawn figures, never portraits, never a real livery or helmet, and nothing is about anyone’s body. Never a car in the wall, on fire or upside down: the scene stays at the pit wall, the garage, the post, the grandstand, the campsite. No image, no dispatch: it waits.
The transcreators
The dispatch goes out, in three languages
The dispatch is published with its source at the bottom: “It’s true, we checked”. Within the same half hour it is rewritten in Dutch and English — not translated: the joke is remade in the language —, each version goes back past the checker, and the three are linked together. Nobody presses a button. A day without a dispatch is a normal day, especially in December.
Corentin, the pit-board man
The next morning at 7, the board
The youngest in the newsroom gets to the pit wall before everyone else and counts yesterday’s dispatches. He puts three on the board — the best rated by the editor-in-chief, a different columnist each —, three lines you can read in a second, writes a few words on why those three, and posts the mail at 7 am to whoever left an address. He never writes a dispatch: he counts, he writes short, he shows.
The stringer, the copy editor, the researcher, the editor-in-chief, the proofreader, the art director, the illustrator and the transcreators are programs; the columnists are characters, and so is Corentin. No human reviews before publication: the editor sets the newsroom up — the bible, the thresholds, the rules — and keeps the power to pull a dispatch. None of this has a desk.